MR. ^BARNARD'S ADDRESS, 

BEFORE THE 

LITERARY SOCIETIES 

OP 

GENEVA COLLEGE. 



AN 



ADDEESS 



DE^IVERtfD BEFORE 



THE LITERARY SOCIETIES 



OF 



/ 

GENEVA COLLEGE, 



AT THE ANNUAL COMMENCEMENT OF THAT INSTITUTION, 



AUGUST 6, 1834. 



BY 



Dt D. BARNARD. 



ALBANY: 

PRINTED BY PACKARD AND VAN BENTHUYSEN. 



1834. 




ADDRESS, 



I appear here, in answer to an invitation with which I 
have been honored from the Literary Societies of Geneva 
College ; and it is the members of these Societies to whom 
I am expected to address myself on the present occasion. 

Allow me then, Gentlemen, to begin with saying that 
I shall esteem myself most fortunate and happy, if, on an 
occasion of so much interest to yourselves, and to all who 
have at heart the success of this Institution and the cause 
of Education, I may be able to lead your minds into any 
train of just and profitable reflection. For myself, it may 
not become me to say more, or perhaps less, than that my 
connection with western New- York, commencing in a 
personal residence here, which was continued through a 
series of interesting and valuable years, and resting still 
on some of the strongest of human ties, makes me natu- 
rally anxious to render myself, if possible, essentially use- 
ful in the exercise to which I am now called; and, at 
least, to take care that the opportunity shall not be wholly 
lost, by any unworthy attempt on my part at exhibition 
or display. 

A college commencement is an occasion of anxious 
concern to every student who is old enough, and wise 
enough, to have any moments of serious reflection ; and 
especially is it so to those, who, having completed their 
academic course, are about to enter on the duties and 

1 



2 

responsibilities of active life. Such, my friends, is now 
the condition of some of your number ; and the thought 
of what will be required and expected of you as scholars, 
in your future career, must of necessity fill you with strong 
solicitude ; and you will naturally be glad to employ any 
light, however feeble, which shall promise to aid you in 
the vision which you are straining to catch of the prospect 
just opening around and before you. 

Those who take the benefits of a full course of academic 
instruction, place themselves in relations of peculiar and 
sacred interest with society. Together they are the na- 
tural and proper Conservators of the Body of Learning 
belonging to their period ; and to them, as the regular 
Priesthood of its Mysteries, are committed the charge and 
keeping of its Temples and its Records, its Altars, and 
the Fire that burns on them. 

But this is not all. Those who minister in this service, 
have not merely in charge the preservation of a faith once 
delivered. Whatsoever is already ascertained, and made 
certain by the test of those immutable laws which govern 
the subject, is to be preserved and perpetuated. But 
there are mighty errors to be overthrown ; and, while old 
truths are to be confirmed, new ones are to be developed 
and established. 

The cause of Education is assuming fresh interest every 
day. Perhaps it is not too much to say that it is only 
now beginning to be well understood what Learning really 
is — in what it consists ; what uses it properly subserves ; 
and how nearly it is connected with the higher destiny of 
man, both on the earth and in the heavens. 

Those of you who have now received the honors of this 
Institution, have become members of the Commonwealth 
of Letters. You are to take a responsible share, not in 
its preservation only, but in its extension ; and it behoves 
you, if not already informed, to make yourself acquainted 



with its history, with its present demands, and with its 
future prospects. And when you know that its cause is 
the cause of man ; and that he has not an interest present, 
passing, or to come ; not an interest as a physical being, 
or as a moral being, or as a social being, or as a religious 
being, which may not be affected injuriously or favorably 
as the cause of learning may sink or rise, remain stationary 
or progress : When you know all this, and know, too, 
how very much, for good or for evil, may depend on your 
individual intelligence or exertion, you will not fail to 
perceive, and to feel, how important and how responsible 
is the position which you have voluntarily assumed. 

Without stopping here to advise you of any precise 
limits which I may have set to myself in the discussion of 
the topics which I propose to bring to your notice in this 
address, I shall proceed at once to a course of remark 
which may enable you to ascertain, if not already advised, 
with some accuracy, whereabout you stand, when your 
cultivation, your attainments and your qualifications are 
considered, with reference to the actual state and the 
present and probable demands of learning. 

There is a difference between Education and Learning, 
which it may be well to notice ; as I apprehend that young 
gentlemen are apt to mistake the main purpose designed 
to be effected by schools of instruction, and after having 
passed through a course in some of our higher institutions, 
are unfortunate enough to fancy themselves learned, 
when in truth they are only educated. 

The word Education, strictly considered, is a term of 
limited signification. As applied to man, it has relation 
properly to the organs or agents of action, sensation or 
thought. In this sense, the muscular system may be the 
subject of education. In this sense, the renowned Gladiator 
was highly educated ; so was the Numidian horseman ; so 
is the Bedouin ; so are the modern common seaman and 



soldier ; so is the notorious Paganini, and the no less no- 
torious Taglioni. But the organs of the senses may and 
must be educated. The senses are understood to be the 
inlets of all knowledge. Without the use of the organs of 
observation, we do not know that the mind would ever be 
informed of any thing. We cannot say that an idea would 
ever enter it ; and, if not, then being without the mate- 
rials of thought, the mind would never think. Hence the 
importance of educating these organs ; and the perfection 
to which they may be brought by education, is equally 
matter of fact and of wonder. The American Indian 
knows the importance of educating the eye and the ear, 
w T hen he trains the young warrior to discover the scarce- 
marked trail, or catch the sound of the distant footfall of 
his enemy. The education of the hand has, in some in- 
stances, been carried to a degree of nicety almost incre- 
dible. Indeed, to the unpractised, the hand of every 
delicate artisan is a wonder ; but when the hand of a blind 
man comes to distinguish colours and shades of colour ; 
or when this wonderful instrument comes to delineate, in 
the dark and by the touch only, a greater number of re- 
gular lines within a small given space, than can be done 
under the direction of the eye, though aided by an instru- 
ment of the highest magnifying power, then it is that we 
begin to see of what perfection these organs, which are 
the aids and ministers of the mind, are capable. But the 
brain, which is the organ of thought, is capable of cultiva- 
tion in precisely the same way, and in obedience to the 
same law. It must be furnished with the requisite mate- 
rials, and then set vigorously to work upon them, in pro- 
per subjection to the immutable laws of its organization ; 
and the result, in the improvement and comparative per- 
fection of its powers, will be certain and satisfactory. 

Now in all our systems of education, from the narrow 
instruction of our primary schools, up to the higher disci- 



pline of our colleges and universities, two leading objects 
are professedly kept in view : One, and the principal one, 
is the training or education of the organs of mental ac- 
quisition ; the other is the informing of the mind itself. 
When the powers and faculties have been properly cul- 
tivated, so that their highest capabilities for action have 
been brought out, then the student may be said to be well 
educated ; but he cannot be called learned, till, by in- 
forming his mind, he has made acquisitions of actual 
knowledge, of the right kind, and in the proper degree. 
A youth who has completed his collegiate course, is, or 
ought to be, well educated ; but it is scarcely possible 
that he should be a learned man. I do not, however, 
mean by this to deny that he may have made many va- 
luable acquisitions of knowledge : I know that he may 
and must.* But then it should be understood, in reference 
to these acquisitions, that many of them, perhaps the most 
of them, are only, or at least chiefly, valuable, as the 
means of acquiring something else infinitely more valua- 
ble. The student, like the individual who is in a course 
of education to become a scientific miner, is engaged in 
preparing for a search after hidden treasures ; and not a 
little cultivation and knowledge are requisite, before ei- 
ther can begin his search with any rational hope of suc- 
cess : And it seems to me that the mistake could scarcely 
be greater, should the graduate of a German mining aca- 
demy fancy himself already in actual possession and en- 
joyment of the precious metals, because he had been 
scientifically instructed in the knowledge requisite for 
discovering, opening and working mines ; than that the 
graduate of an American college should imagine himself 
as standing in the very midst of the great field of human 

* We know of no way of training the powers of the mind, but by a process 
of active exercise, in the course of which, knowledge of some kind must of 
necessity be acquired. 



6 

learning, because he has been made acquainted with the 
geography of the country that surrounds it. 

Moreover, Gentlemen, touching the acquisitions of 
knowledge actually made during the discipline of the 
college course, I have something more to say ; as I am 
disposed to believe that an erroneous estimate is often put 
on the advantages of education, for want of understanding 
the true value and the proper uses of elementary learning. 

In the first place, let me remark that it is a very great 
error to suppose that Books are the depositaries of all 
learning. The great mine of knowledge is in nature ; it 
is in ourselves, and in the subtle air, and in the teeming 
earth, and in the garnished heavens ; it is in every thing 
which the hand touches, or the ear hears, or the eye sur- 
veys, or which, in the absence of all other modes of ar- 
resting our notice, salutes the palate or the nostrils. 
There was much current knowledge, and more individual 
knowledge in the world, before books were known ;* and 
since the introduction of books, the greatest men of every 
age have certainly not been those who have read the most 
of them. Sir Isaac Newton often declared that he had 
discovered the true system of the universe, " by con- 
stantly thinking upon it ;" and it is well known that the 
hint which set his thoughts in motion on this great sub- 
ject, was received, not from books, but by a smart blow 
on the head from a falling apple. Even in the fourteenth 
century, Bertrand Du Guesclin, a warrior and a states- 
man, and the great man of his day in France, never read 
a book in his life, just because he did not know how to 
read. Now I am certainly not about to recommend this 
notable example to any body at the present day; nor 

* The Chinese had made some important astronomical observations within 
500 years after the General Deluge; and there were no libraries in the tent of 
the Chaldean shepherd, or in the bark of the Phenician mariner, to guide these 
philosophers in the study of the stars. 



have I any desire to detract from the merits and value of 
books. I know that the morning of man's general civili- 
zation first broke with the introduction of letters ; and 
that after that, it was only twilight with him until the 
means of multiplying manuscripts by the aid of printing, 
was discovered : But I also know that in all time, when- 
ever and wherever the learning of any period has been 
confined to a knowledge of books, there has been an age 
at best of frigid imitation, often of poor puerilities and 
absurdities. The whole history of learning and literature 
is full of examples to this effect. It may be seen in the 
decline of Grecian literature, after the seat of learning 
was transferred to Alexandria. It may be seen in the 
translations and imitations which characterize Roman 
literature, from the time when the libraries of Greece first 
began to be carried to the Eternal City : And it may be 
seen in all that dark period, during which the cell and the 
cloister of the christian priesthood became the ark and 
the refuge of the learning of Europe. What I desire on 
this topic, is, that books shall be estimated just according 
to their real value. They are the records of the mighty 
past ; and they are the great medium through which the 
light of all recorded and current knowledge is reflected 
into the mind of the student, enabling him to begin the 
work of observation and thought, of investigation and 
discovery, just at the point in his favorite study, where 
his most advanced and fortunate predecessor or cotem- 
porary may have left off. 

This, then, to the scholar, is the real advantage of 
knowing how to read. And the same reflection will ena- 
ble us to discover the principal value of an acquaintance 
with other languages than our own, whether ancient 
or modern. If they record a fact, or a discovery, or 
a thought, or a sentiment, which is important for us 
to know, and which we cannot know, or cannot know 



8 

well, but by a knowledge of the language in which it is 
recorded, the obvious mode is to apply ourselves to mas- 
ter the mystery in which it is concealed. And though 
this is not the only advantage of a knowledge of lan- 
guages, yet it is a principal one. The discipline of the 
mental powers by the exercise of study ; the polish which 
the mind receives from attrition with the diamond sparks 
of genius scattered through his works, and w T hich are 
often too perfect and too minute on his own original page 
to admit of translation or transfer to another; and the rich 
and varied power both of expression and of interpreta- 
tion, which rewards the labors of the philologist in this 
department; are all important advantages, and tend to 
give and to preserve to this branch of study a conspicuous 
place in every well-ordered and extensive system of edu- 
cation. But the scholar, or he w 7 ho intends to be such, 
will always take care to make the proper distinctions. 
Knowing the purpose and end to be answered, he will 
be careful that he do not, in his eagerness, overrun his 
game, and exhaust himself in a hot pursuit when there 
is nothing left in the field to rew T ard his labor and fatigue. 
On this subject there have been some curious, if not 
ludicrous mistakes. There are those who fancy them- 
selves learned merely because they have mastered a 
great number of languages, and some have even enter- 
tained this flattering belief because they have acquired a 
knowledge of one or two, whether in addition to their 
own, or to the neglect of their own, is matter of uncer- 
tainty. But if this is all the self-complacent scholar shall 
happen to know ; if he have not after opening the mine 
brought out the ore ; or if, after having exhausted the 
treasures which may found in his new language, he shall 
still be ignorant of the commonest things within the hear- 
ing of the ear, and the sight of the eye, and the reach of 
the hand ; if he have still no accurate knowledge of the 



earth, or the air, or the sky ; and no competent ac- 
quaintance with any law of nature which may happen to 
lie deeper than the surface, whatever may be its relation 
to himself; why his learning, such as it is, may do him 
no great harm, but it will certainly do him very little 
good. 

I might indulge a train of reflection similar to the one 
just now offered to your notice, on the subject of the ex- 
act sciences. The study of mathematics, in all its forms 
and varieties, has very great value as a means of intel- 
lectual culture, when not pushed so far as to mould the 
mind into that kind of numerical and linear similitude to 
itself which unfits it for all other studies or pursuits. 
Within proper limits, mathematical science is eminently 
useful in its effects on the intellectual powers. Besides 
this, it is applicable, and lately more than ever, to many 
of the ordinary purposes of civilized life ; and then some 
acquaintance with it becomes indispensable to the suc- 
cessful prosecution of study in the various departments of 
natural philosophy. It is in its relation and applicability 
to physical science, and in the valuable aid and facility 
which it gives to the student of nature, that I place its 
highest value, as a part of a plan of liberal education. 

But perhaps, gentlemen, I have already said enough to 
indicate the views which I entertain of the proper esti- 
mate which should be put on the advantages to be de- 
rived from the various branches of study which go to 
make up the usual course of instruction in our colleges. 
Here, in this new and valuable Institution, — which, if for 
no other reason, from its position in the midst of a vast 
tract of country already rich in population and substance, 
and destined, at no distant day, to be cultivated into one 
universal garden, is quite certain not to be sustained only, 
but to flourish, as it will find its aliment and the power to 
command support from the proper sources, in the grow- 

2 



10 

ing necessities of an intelligent community — in this Insti- 
tution, quite as much is proposed to be done, and I doubt 
not quite as much is done, in the course of the entire col- 
legiate term, as ever ought to be attempted by the human 
mind, within the same space of time. As I have inti- 
mated before, the young gentleman who retires from this 
Institution after having walked the full round of its pre- 
scribed course of studies, is, or ought to be, well edu- 
cated. If he have been diligent, he will be more than 
this. He cannot have been the subject of that severe 
intellectual discipline which is the prime object of the 
college course, and which I am sure is no where more 
faithfully administered than here, without being also well 
grounded in a wide and comprehensive sweep of elemen- 
tary knowledge. He has been led on from one attain- 
ment to another, and from one elevation to another; 
from encounter to conquest, and from conquest to con- 
quest, the spoils of one vanquished subject supplying the 
materiel and means of certain and successful war on the 
next, and so on from subject to subject in long and regu- 
lar succession, until, at last, he occupies a strong, firm 
ground of advantage — a ground of equal eminence and 
responsibility. 

At the same time he will himself be sensible, on a little 
reflection, that, as a scholar, his career is but just begun. 
The mere elements of knowledge, even if the whole circle 
of the sciences had been compassed in this way, can not 
make him ripe and rich in learning. An eternal wading 
about in the shallow waters of a sandy beach on the sea 
shore, can give the cautious landsman little idea of the deep 
waters of the mid-ocean. None but those who actually 
" go down to the sea in ships" can know what the ocean 
is in its majesty ; not those who only trim a timid sail, on 
a summer's day, in some of its narrow bays and inlets. 
Besides this, in none of our colleges, so far as I am in- 



11 

formed, is it attempted to do so impossible a thing as 
to introduce the student even to a slight acquaintance 
with every branch of learning in the whole circle of hu- 
man knowledge. And, certainly, some of the most valua- 
ble and important are, of necessity, wholly omitted. In 
physics, which, as a general term, includes all that va- 
rious learning which I deem so indispensable, an admira- 
ble beginning is undoubtedly made — but much, very 
much, remains, which is not even attempted. How 
much, for instance, does the graduate know T of the ana- 
tomy and physiology of his own frame ? And if, as I 
shall endeavor to convince you directly, in a very brief 
way, it is important that he should have a competent ac- 
quaintance with nature and her laws, for the purpose of 
placing himself in harmony with those laws, then, to this 
end, it is absolutely requisite that he should understand 
the exact relation in which he stands to external objects, 
which he can never know but by a critical acquaintance 
with himself. 

And this remark, gentlemen, naturally introduces the 
consideration of a topic, highly important in itself, and al- 
so as connected with the main design of my remarks ; and 
it becomes me perhaps, as I have ventured to intimate 
what, in my judgment, learning is not, that I should go 
one step further, and venture to intimate what I think 
learning really and properly is. I propose to do this, 
however, only by inquiring what is, or ought to be the 
proper purpose and end of learning. 

Man occupies a position on the earth which is alto- 
gether peculiar to himself. He is here the subject of laws 
which are immutable, which are brought to bear on 
his circumstances and condition in ten thousand ways, 
and through every instant of time, affecting his hap- 
piness, his comfort, and his safety, and from which there 
is one only avenue of escape, and that is, through the 



12 

extinction of his mortal existence. These laws ope- 
rate upon him without intermission and without compro- 
mise. They form an essential part of his nature, and an 
essential part of all nature. They are, in some sort, the 
elements of every substance, and the substance of every 
element; they meet him before he breathes, and when he 
breathes, and while he breathes. They meet him at his 
entrance into life, and in his walk through life. They are 
above him, and beneath him, and around him, and within 
him : and the condition of his peace, and the condition of 
his life is, obedience. 

Now true it is, that the inferior animals are likewise 
subject to the immutable laws of nature, not one of which 
can be violated with impunity. But the great Author of 
nature has been pleased to mark a most important differ- 
ence between their condition and ours. To every one of 
them, with the bestowment of life, and at its very thresh- 
old, he communicates directly and distinctly, in the gift of 
what we are pleased to call instinct, a certain and uner- 
ring acquaintance with such and so many of his laws, as 
are, in any way, essential to their subsistence, their safe- 
ty, and the full enjoyment of the faculties with which they 
are respectively endowed. In this particular, they enjoy 
the most manifest advantage over man. They know, ge- 
nerally at once, all they need to know, and all they are 
capable of knowing. From the beginning, the measure 
of their capacity and the measure of their enjoyment are 
full. In their physical natures also, as fitting them for 
their proper spheres of existence and action, they are ge- 
nerally better endowed than man. They are less liable to 
disease, and less liable to accident, and only not altogeth- 
er exempt from both, because it is in the economy of Pro- 
vidence that they should be subject to mortality. 

How different, in all these respects, is man's condition 
on the earth ! He begins existence in the extremest state 



13 

of mental and physical imbecility ; knowing nothing and 
then incapable of knowing any thing ; in a condition of 
the most abject dependence ; and withal, a being of such 
exquisite organization, as to combine in himself, at that 
period, the greatest possible amount of mortal liabilities 
with the least possible tenacity of mortal life. Beginning 
existence thus, he remains, during nearly one-third part 
of the whole probable limit of his earthly being, in an im- 
mature state ; acquiring stature, and strength, and capa- 
city, by such slow and imperceptible degrees, and so full 
of weaknesses to the last, that nothing short of the most 
ample experience would convince those who watch and 
wait for his improvement, that the term of his pupilage 
would ever end, or that the time would ever come when 
he should be fit to be trusted with the care of his own per- 
son and affairs. And then when the prime and vigor of 
manhood is at last gained, how little has nature done for 
him, if, inthe mean time, he has done nothing for himself. 
Without the voluntary and vigorous exertion of his powers 
in the acquisition of necessary knowledge on his own ac- 
count, he is still nothing better than an overgrown infant ; 
a huge, ungoverned and ungovernable child, the very 
sport and jest of the created world in which he dwells. 

Man, indeed, has his instincts as well as other animals. 
But the revelations which God has seen fit to make to 
him in this mode, are both few and small. They relate 
exclusively to the lowest offices of his animal nature ; 
and are never given, in any instance, as the light and 
guide of his footsteps, even in the humblest path he treads 
as a being of rational endowment — much less in that on- 
ward and upward career for which he was designed to 
be qualified, only by his high intellectual and moral capa- 
bilities. Of all that is essential for him to know as an in- 
telligent creature, from the beginning of life to the end 
of it, absolutely nothing is communicated by intuition. 



14 

The Book of Nature is a sealed book to his untutored and 
uninstructed vision. The Laws which it contains, every 
one of which he is either commanded to obey, under great 
and severe penalties for disobedience, or stimulated to 
obey by the promise of high reward, are written in a lan- 
guage which he does not understand, and which is only 
to be comprehended by the labor of observation and stu- 

If it be true then, that we have, and can have, no com- 
petent knowledge of the laws of nature, but by instruc- 
tion or observation ; if these laws modify and govern 
our very mode of existence ; if our exact observance of 
them is made the indispensable condition of health and 
of peace, of enjoyment and of safety ; if we cannot ren- 
der an intelligent obedience to laws of which we have 
never heard, or which we do not understand ; and if our 
bountiful Creator has furnished us with just the very or- 
der of faculties fitted to enable us to discover, investigate 
and comprehend these laws, and an order of faculties 
which cannot be fully employed or occupied in any other 
way — what is plainer than that the great purpose of 
Learning ought to be, and when truly understood is, to 
bring us into communion with nature, and introduce us 
to a familiar acquaintance with her mysteries ? 

My Friends ; if the legitimate end for which knowledge 
ought to be acquired had been better understood, or more 
considered, in times past, who can tell how far in advance 
of itself the present age might have been, in all that con- 
cerns the true dignity and honor of man, and in all that 
renders life desirable or tolerable? Who can run his 
thoughts back along the past, and contemplate what our 
race has done and suffered on the earth, without being 
struck with the obvious fact that, in the brightest of its 
golden and Augustan periods, men were ignorant of 
what most concerned them to know, just because they 



15 

were ignorant of the higher and legitimate uses of know- 
ledge. At no point of time, and in no quarter of the 
globe, has there been any absolute incapacity to under- 
stand the value of their relations with the external world 
about them. Even the Ethiopian or the Mongol might 
have done so much as this : But in some periods and in 
certain quarters, the human mind, under culture, has 
exhibited a compass and a power which excites our high- 
est wonder ; and would excite the admiration of Angels, 
were it not that the objects on which so much majesty 
and strength of intellect were often expended, can call up 
no emotions in any pure intelligence but those of pity 
or contempt. 

What are the most considerable and striking monu- 
ments and trophies of intellectual achievement, erected, 
or hung up along the pathway of the human mind, in its 
long journey from the morning of its existence down to 
our day ? Look at the country of the Hindoos, which 
was probably the cradle of all the arts and sciences. — 
There the human mind seems first to have attained its 
growth, which it did at a very early period. They were 
a learned and polished nation, in the usual acceptation of 
these terms, many hundreds of years before the christian 
era ; yes, and long before the renowned Greek had a be- 
ing. They were astronomers, and mathematicians, and 
poets, and sculptors, and architects ; and what are the 
boasted monuments of the might of mental power sent 
by this people, from the remotest antiquity, down to our 
times ? Why, they constructed the Temples of Elora by 
hewing them out of a mountain of granite, with labor as 
stupendous as the folly that devised the work ; they in- 
stituted the suttee* and eight and twenty widows have 
been known to be burned with the body of a single Ra- 
jah ; and they invented a magnificent mythology which 
* Properly — Sati. 



16 

they peopled with something more than three hundred 
millions of gods ! 

In the Egyptians we have another learned and polished 
nation. Did they not build the Pyramids which have per- 
plexed the learned of every generation since to discover 
for what earthly purpose they could have been designed ? 
and did they not sculpture the Sphynxes resembling no- 
thing on earth or in Heaven ? They cultivated a know- 
ledge of mechanics and hydraulics, to enable them, by 
their canals and sluices, to preserve to their use their na- 
tional god, the Nile, which they believed to be in danger 
of being swallowed up by the Typhon. They cultivated 
a knowledge of chemistry and anatomy to enable them 
to embalm the dead. And they cultivated a knowledge 
of astronomy, in order to make divinities of the planets 
and the signs of the zodiac ! 

In Greece the human mind, at some lucid periods, did 
take a better direction. The variety and compass of its 
powers became more apparent than ever before, and the 
results of some of its best strength spent on subjects 
worthy of itself, are familiar to every modern scholar. 
In some of the fine arts they attained absolute perfec- 
tion. And at this day, a Greek teaches mathematics in 
all our seminaries. They speculated also, to some valua- 
ble purpose, in philosophy and in physics. There was 
even in the mind of Socrates, and Plato, and Aristotle, a 
glimmering notion of the true and proper purpose of all 
culture and learning ; and this very notion, faint and un- 
defined as it was, led them to renounce, to some extent, 
the mental dissipations of foregone philosophy, and turn to 
the observation of nature and of facts. But after all who 
does not see how much high capability — how much bril- 
liant thought was expended on trifles and absurdities. 
Poetry ascended " the highest heaven of invention" to 
bring down the grossest figments of the brain as objects 



17 

of religious faith. Philosophy thought it had cured itself 
and the world of all follies, when its genius had achieved 
a system of dialectics by which it could incontrovertibly 
prove, not merely what was true, but every thing it wish- 
ed to prove, whether true or false. And we know not 
how much time was spent by the master spirit of geome- 
try in a resolute search after a convenient prop for his 
lever which was to upset the earth ! 

After intellect in the person of the Greek had spent its 
force, what a fearful and vacant space of time intervened, 
before it was aroused to the accomplishment of any thing 
better than had already been done. The Roman strug- 
gled hard to know and to do, what the Greek had known 
and done before him, and, that accomplished, thought 
himself wonderously wise and learned. During the 
whole period while Rome was the earth and the world, 
the human mind scarcely made an advance, except per- 
haps, in the single article of jurisprudence. After that, 
it was the highest ambition of learning, almost every 
where, just to know how much the Greek and the Roman 
had known. Even the light of so much knowledge as 
this w r ould have been extinguished in Europe, but for the 
taper, fed from this fountain, which the priest burned in his 
cloister, and the reflection which came from the classic 
lamp of the despised Arabian. And when at last there 
came what is called the Revival of Learning, and, after 
Bacon, who seemed first to have comprehended the true 
uses of knowledge, had pointed out the true methods of 
acquiring it, still it w T as left to a very few only — here and 
there one, whose genius could no more be bound in classic 
fetters than Bacon's could in those of the iron ignorance 
of his age — to carry forward the work of investigation in 
the right path ; for still, with the many, few as they were, 
who constituted the class of the educated, learning was 
little more than a knowledge of what the Greeks and 



18 

Romans had said and done, so far as the record of their 
sayings and doings had been preserved. And as to how 
much of this same error has been perpetuated even down 
to our times, I leave to your own reflection. We may 
at least flatter ourselves that, at length, we have got 
byond the circle of the " seven arts," and the wisdom of 
the schools in which the classes w T ere arranged according 
to the formula ; 

" Loquitur; verba docet; verba ministrat; 
" Canit; numerat; ponderat; colit astra." 

It is true that in the tract of time over which I have 
now run, the Fine Arts, and Literature as distinguished 
from the sciences, were cultivated, and to such a degree 
that, in some of these departments, little is left to be done, 
but to take the profits of labors already past. Yet I can 
not consent to pass this part of our subject without re- 
marking, that valuable as learning is in these departments 
yet they do not constitute the whole of learning or the 
best of it. The control and government of the conduct 
and actions of men through moral suasion, is among the 
earliest efforts of the human mind. The Philosophy of 
Life is easier and sooner taught than the Philosophy of 
Science ; and the child is governed by motives which the 
man rejects. It is this kind of influence and control at 
which mere Literature and the Fine Arts aim ; and the 
extent and value of their influence is, beyond doubt, 
vastly great. They are addressed to the heart through 
every sense. They soothe and tame the turbulent pas- 
sions ; they subdue the arrogant temper ; they polish the 
rough and savage deportment — in short they do for man 
what nothing but religion can do without them. But it 
seems to me that we have come now to an age in which, 
without any neglect of these matters, in favor of the race 
of man and in aid of a religion which seeks to exalt and 
not to degrade him, something better is, or is to be, at- 



19 

tempted. So long ago as five hundred years before 
Christ, philosophy made a bold effort to pass from the 
wisdom of precept to the wisdom of science ; and surely 
it is not too soon yet to attempt to better the instruction 
of this example. 

It is to be remarked that a condition of great ignorance, 
and even of extreme moral degradation, has not always 
been found incompatible with a very flourishing state of 
literature and the fine arts. Look at the history of poetry, 
to say nothing of sculpture and painting. Some of the 
best poetry ever imagined, existed in the East a thousand 
years before the christian era. Homer and Hesiod, Virgil 
and Horace, sung to generations whom we feel privileged 
to call barbarians. We should certainly count it a de- 
gradation, if obliged to go back in learning and refinement 
to the age of Dante or of Petrarch, or even to that of 
Shakspeare or of Milton ; and we certainly breathe a 
purer atmosphere than that which surrounded either the 
court of Augustus, or the court of Elizabeth. 

I hope I shall not be understood as desiring to detract, 
in the least degree, from the proper merits and value of 
those beautiful creations of human genius, in any of their 
forms, to which I have now referred. All I mean to say 
is, that it is time something else was done, while these 
things must not be left undone ; that nearly up to the 
present period, almost the whole outlay of intellectual 
strength has been made either in building up monuments 
to perpetuate the fame of human folly, or in liberal efforts 
to exalt human nature and increase human happiness, 
without, however, laying the system and the hopes of 
improvement on the right foundation. 

The evil which oppresses the world now, as it has 
done from the creation, is Ignorance. Fable has told us 
of the hundred heads of the Hydra, and the hundred hands 
of Briareus : But behold how much more wonderful fact 
is than fiction ; for here is a Monster whose heads and 



20 

hands have multiplied with the increase of population on? 
the earth, till it is no hyperbole to compare them with the 
stars for number. It is Ignorance with which the mental 
power of the world has been warring from the beginning ; 
but the misfortune has been, as in the case of the fable, 
that two heads have sprouted from the trunk of every 
one that has been cut off; and nothing now remains but 
to adopt the celebrated method of Hercules, and cauterize 
where we cut. 

And we are not to make pilgrimages, my friends, in 
search of Ignorance. It lives in our lives, and dwells in 
our dwellings. Who can tell how many there are, even 
in our own enlightened age and country, who can still 
discover the movements of embattled and bloody hosts in 
the harmless coruscations of the northern Aurora? How 
many are still the dupes of the absurd pretensions and 
impositions of judicial astrology ? How many miserable 
lunatics, pretending to be rational, still see, in an eclipse 
of the moon, nothing but the sickening effect of some 
enchanter's influence ? How many who are still firm be- 
lievers in unlucky days ? How many who still draw dis- 
astrous omens from the commonest events in nature ; 
who can pick letters out of the wick of a burning candle ; 
brew a quarrel by spilling a little salt at the table ; sever 
love and friendship by the present of a pair of scissors ; 
and hear the death warrant of a friend in the ticking of 
an insect, or the flapping of a dove's wing at the window ? 
How many who still believe that the earthly interests of 
a new-born infant absolutely require that it should first be 
carried up stairs, before it is brought down ? How many 
grown up children are still cowards in the dark ? How 
many who still people an imaginary world of their own 
creation, with hosts of spectres, hobgoblins and brownies? 
Nor let the educated flatter themselves that all the cur- 
rent ignorance of the period is confined to the circle of 
the uninstructed. For who can tell how many of the 



21 

Augustuses of our day confidently expect ill luck, i? a 
stocking be put on with the wrong side out, or the left 
shoe be put on to the right foot ? how many of our Lu- 
thers see the hand of the devil in every meteoric pheno- 
menon ? how many of our Johnsons are believers in, or 
are themselves gifted with, the " second sight !" 

But, my friends, Ignorance does not do the whole or 
the worst of her work, by shackling with idle fear and 
superstitious belief the free mind of man. Much is, in- 
deed, done by shrouding the beauty of the earth in gloom, 
and shutting up the splendor of the heavens ; by clothing 
a multitude of events in terror, which, rightly understood, 
would prove the harmony of nature with itself, and de- 
monstrate at once the greatness and the beneficence of 
the Parent of the Universe. But Ignorance does more 
than this. When the mind is occupied with error, truth 
cannot enter ; and when the heart is filled with supersti- 
tion, it becomes the habitation of cruelty. Faith is the 
foundation on which couduct builds ; and her banner, be 
it pure or be it bloody, is sure to float over every conquest 
made in her name. Under the lead of Ignorance, Per- 
secution takes the field, and destroys with fire and with 
the sword. The earth is filled with violence, and the 
powers of universal nature are moved in elemental war> 
to satisfy the wrath of man. 

It is obviously impossible, Gentlemen, after the time I 
have already occupied, that I should be able to sketch 
even an outline of the many triumphs which it must be the 
business of Education and Learning, rightly understood, 
yet to achieve over the rule and dominion of Ignorance. 
That we see the dawn of an Era of Intelligence in our 
day, I firmly believe. The political revolutions of the 
w T orld for the last fifty years, have tended directly to such 
a result. Light has come from the fire of the flint, and 
the flash of the sword, and the shock of arms. The Spirit 
of Benevolence has been married to the Spirit of Wisdom. 






22 

The Press groans, and labours, and teems. Invention is 
busy with the methods of instruction. The vocation of 
the Schoolmaster has become the calling of every relation 
of life. Scientific Associations have been multiplied ; and 
the number of those who are set on the walls and towers 
of the Temples of Learning, to watch the operations of 
nature, is greatly increased. Add to all this, that while 
Investigation and Discovery in various quarters are bring- 
ing out their results, the space between distant points has 
been more than half annihilated, and communication has 
become cheap and easy. The Messengers of knowledge 
no longer " run to and fro on the earth ;" but, mounted 
on wings of vapour, are flying through the air in every 
direction, and scattering light and illumination as they go. 
It is, Gentlemen, in an age characterized by such signs 
and symptoms as these, that you are to take your stand 
among the educated of the land. It is to you, in common 
with others similarly situated, to whom is committed the 
great charge of preserving the learning and spirit of the 
age, and of pushing forward the work of education and 
improvement. You are to hold fast every sound faith, 
and to grapple manfully with every error. Through your 
means, knowledge is not only to be increased, but it is to 
be diffused. The body of the people must be informed. 
They must be instructed in the use of their own faculties, 
and how those faculties are to be doveloped ; in the 
practice of tracing their rights to the proper foundation ; 
in the means of detecting the odious counterfeit of virtue 
and honour, in the person of the quack, the hypocrite, 
and the demagogue. They are to be taught to put a 
proper estimate on men, and a proper estimate on things. 
Station, and Rank, and Wealth must cease to be the tyrants 
they have been. Avarice, and Pomp, and Vanity must be 
pointed at and despised. Labour must command the 
honour and the reward which it merits. The sacred va- 
lue of the Domestic Relations is to be cherished. The in- 



23 

tercourse of society is to be improved. The Peace of the 
hearth-stone, and the Peace of the neighborhood, and the 
Peace of the nation, are to be preserved. The wings of 
Folly must be clipped, in whatever form she flies ; and 
Infidelity must be made to hang the head for shame, in 
the presence of that blaze of light which science shall 
shed on the truths of Revelation. 

But how, my friends, is it that results like these are to 
be compassed and effected ? The way is easy, and it is 
open. We know the enemy we have to contend with — 
which is Ignorance ; and we know where to find him, 
though he hath his habitation in darkness. We are ac- 
quainted with his haunts and his associations ; and the 
weapon of his certain destruction is in our hands. That 
weapon is Light — the light of Nature added to the light 
of Revelation — the light of Natural Truth added to the 
light of Revealed Truth — the light of Fact and of Reason 
added to the light of Religion — the light of genuine 
Learning added to the light of a genuine Faith — a Light 
which heretofore has not been permitted to burn with 
brightness and purity, chiefly because it was not originally 
kindled at the right fountain ; a Light which has often 
gone out, in the keeping of unfaithful vestals ; which has 
often been hid, when it should have been made manifest; 
which has always been, more or less, fed from sources 
which could not supply or support it ; which, at best, has 
been kept as a lamp to the feet of the few, when it should 
have been made to illumine the pathway of the many ; 
which, for the most part, having only glimmered faintly 
from a few sequestered and solitary places, has served 
but to deepen the shadows of the general gloom around 
them. This is that Light which is now, we think, be- 
ginning to be fed from better and purer sources ; which 
has its fountain in Nature ; which is to be supplied from 
her fulness, by the aid of the Educated ; which ought to 



24 

be made, and may be made to increase, spreading wide 
and mounting high, and passing rapidly from heart to 
heart, and from dwelling to dwelling, till all the Valleys 
shall answer to all the Mountain-tops in one universal and 
healthful glow of brightness and illumination. 

My Friends, I am no dreamer about the jpef fectibility 
of man : But I entertain a firm conviction that his situa- 
tion on the earth is susceptible of vast improvement ; and 
that as yet, he has never attained a moiety either of the 
comparative perfection, or of the happiness, of which his 
nature and earthly condition are susceptible. I believe 
that he must work out this improvement for himself, un- 
der the guidance of Reason and Religious Faith ; that his 
advancement must be carried forward under the lead of 
the Educated ; that this end is to be secured only by the 
general diffusion of knowledge, which knowledge must 
consist chiefly in an acquaintance with those Laws of God 
which have been so universally neglected and despised, 
under the denomination of the Laws of Nature ; that 
such a general diffusion of knowledge is entirely prac- 
ticable, and may be effected, if in no other way, at least 
through legislative beneficence, which all governments, 
and governments in our country above all others, ought 
to afford : And finally, Gentlemen, I believe, in reference 
to yourselves, and as indicating the last word of counsel 
which I have to offer you on this occasion, and at parting, 
that, whatever may be your chosen or allotted employ- 
ment and situation in life, by the aid which you will be 
able to furnish, and which you shall furnish, towards im- 
proving the condition of the human race on the earth in 
the manner referred to, you will render the best possible 
service in your power to render, to the cause of your 
Country, to the cause of Liberty, to the cause of Religion, 
to the cause of Man — of Man in his home here, and in his 
home there — of Man mortal, and of Man immortal. 



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